


Unsettled

by Dissenter



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Daemon Separation, Dysfunctional Relationships, Dysfunctional daemon bonds, Everyone Has Issues, Friendship, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, You know it's bad when Sasuke is the normal one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 06:09:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8390239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissenter/pseuds/Dissenter
Summary: In which all of team seven are poster children for unhealthy relationships with their daemons. Except for Sasuke, who is fully in touch with his inner and outer daemons.





	1. Sai

**Author's Note:**

> I was looking for my notes on the Jinchuriki's twin and I found this on my hard drive. It was mostly finished so I figured i'd clean it up and post it.

Shin’s absence is a hard cold ache against Sai’s soul and without him Sai can’t quite remember how to be human. He knows he unsettles people, even people who do not know Shin is gone, that just assume his daemon is something small that hides in his pocket. He isn’t right, isn’t natural, and people sense that. Can feel the something missing, that means Shin is gone. Even Danzo, for all that he was the one responsible, even Danzo doesn’t like looking at the empt space at th side of his root operatives. There is a reason severing is considered an abomination.

Sometimes he wishes he were just like all the other root operatives that he is so careful not to stand out from. Truly severed, soul cut away, with no more freedom of heart or will than an automaton. At least then he wouldn’t _know_ he was wrong. But most of the time he is just fiercely glad that this much at least has not been stolen from him. That he can still _care,_ even if he doesn’t understand how to process that caring. Naruto and Aiko help a little. The very things that make most people uncomfortable with Aiko, the way she ignores daemons in favour of speaking directly to their humans, help make Sai feel more like a person. It’s been so long since a daemon spoke to him, and even if she isn’t his, isn’t Shin, that kind of emotional connection feeds something in his soul. Naruto has a big heart, and a strong soul, big and strong enough to reach out his hand and share a little of it with Sai.

Still he misses Shin though, and feeling the touch of him constantly under the skin of his chest only aggravates the pain. He wonders if that’s why Kakashi and Aya never touch, if it hurts too much being able to feel each other and yet be unable to speak. At least they can look at each other though. He wonders what Shin would have looked like if he’d settled.

He looks at the daemons of the ordinary shinobi, chunin, jounin, ANBU and wonders if they fully appreciate their settled forms. If they understand what a gift it is to know your own soul’s true shape, to have that much of your identity fixed, and known, and individualised. They don’t appreciate it he doesn’t think, and he is half glad, half resentful that they don’t know, can’t know. Some of them even resent their daemon’s shape. He still wonders at the way Sakura and her daemon hate each other, the fraying of their bond is an ugly, ugly thing to see.

Shin never got a chance to settle.  Sai was a child, and Shin was a child’s daemon, and the last time he saw Shin was all fear, and pain, and other people’s hands touching where they shouldn’t. Memories of a cold sterile hospital room, a too sharp blade, Shin cycling through a dozen different forms in a second trying to get free, but by that point it was a practiced routine and the doctor’s grip never faltered.

Shin had been smart though and he’d had a plan. A crazy one in a million, desperate plan. Neither of them was stupid, they’d known what was coming, what would be done to them to turn Sai into one of Root’s perfect soldiers. Shin had been smart, and he’d planned, and moments before they’d grabbed him he’d shifted into the shape of a bee, and left his sting buried in the skin over Sai’s heart. The operatives charged with their severing hadn’t noticed.

The severing had been terrible, had been everything childrens and adults nightmares were made of. But it hadn’t been complete. They had taken Shin, they had cut them apart, and killed him in doing so, but a piece of Shin is still buried in Sai’s chest. Sai’s soul might be a broken, shredded, remnant of a thing but it is not entirely gone. He can still want. Can still read his books and try to make friends and do his very best to claim back something human of himself. He might never see, or speak to Shin again, may never know Shin’s final form, but he isn’t empty or soulless yet.


	2. Naruto

Aiko unsettled people, she didn’t act like a daemon should. If Naruto was loud, and inappropriate, and attention seeking, then Aiko was ten times worse. The both of them knew it but they couldn’t seem to stop.

It wouldn’t be a problem exactly, beyond the general annoyance factor if Aiko knew how to behave. She didn’t, or maybe she wouldn’t. She was loud and inappropriate, and she spoke directly to other humans. It wasn’t taboo, not the way touching someone else’s daemon was, but it still wasn’t right. Daemons weren’t meant to directly address humans not their own, just as it was rude for a human to speak directly to someone else’s daemon. It wasn’t something most people needed taught. Usually people just picked up on it from the behaviour of the adults around them, part of normal socialisation. Either Naruto’s isolation had kept him from learning this normally, or he was just so desperate for attention that Aiko didn’t care how she got it. Even shocking humans by addressing them directly was better than being ignored, better than the way human and daemon eyes slid past them in casual distaste. It got them attention alright, but it also put people’s teeth on edge, made people uncomfortable. In the end it just became a vicious cycle, the harder they tried to attract attention, the more people tried to avoid them.

It was funny because Naruto himself never gave Aiko much attention, he was uncomfortable looking too close at his own feelings, afraid of what he might find. Aiko never called him on it, but she kept on demanding attention from other humans, and he kept pretending not to see how uncomfortable it made them. They understood each other a little too well and so their conversations were always awkward, full of silences where neither of them was prepared to say what they really felt.

It got better as they got older. When Iruka sensei started paying attention to him, when his classmates started laughing at his pranks not his poor grades, when Hokage jiji started inviting him for tea at the tower. Aiko was still… off and both of them were still loud, but there was less of a harsh edge of desperation from the two of them. And if they still spoke more to others than they did to each other, well that was as much habit as anything else. It was surprising what people could get used to.

She settled the day of the genin exam. She settled when Naruto used all his attention grabbing loudness, and desire to protect his friends to defend Iruka sensei from Mizuki. Suddenly the clearing was full of a thousand Aiko’s to match the thousand Naruto’s, all in the same form. A flock of angry seagulls determined to mob the threat. She never changed again, and honestly Naruto was quite pleased with how she settled. Not as cool as a tiger, or a bear or something, but flying daemons were awesome, and Iruka sensei said they were useful for reconnaissance, before smiling and taking him for ramen to celebrate.

He didn’t really learn what Aiko’s form meant until he went on his first C rank though. Tazuna the bridge builder was a miserable old drunk but he knew a hell of a lot about daemon lore, and so it was him who’d finally helped him understand. Some stuff he’d known from the academy. She was a bird, which he’d sort of been expecting even before she settled, birds in general were a sign of creative outside the box thinkers, and high aspirations, both traits which Naruto had in abundance. But details had been thin on the ground. Most people in Konoha had forest daemons, ones that would have been at home amongst Konoha’s trees if they truly had been animals. Aiko stood out, just as she always had, which had made more specific information hard to come by. Tazuna however was from Wave country, where ocean based daemons were the norm. According to Tazuna Aiko was a Black tailed gull. A loud social animal with a tendency to attack enemies en-mass. Apparently they were viciously protective of their territories and colonies, and highly adaptable.

For some reason hearing all that, hearing all the ways Aiko’s form _fit,_ had eased something in Naruto’s chest. Maybe he and Aiko were weird, and unhealthy, and didn’t talk to each other a often as they should, but Aiko’s shape proved that deep down where it mattered, the two of them belonged together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's wondering, Iruka's daemon is a guillemot. Which is also a seabird, and a troublemaker, but is known for looking after chicks even if they are not their own.


	3. Sakura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura and her daemon don't like each other much.

There’s a fracture between Sakura and Takeshi. They find themselves at odds too much. It’s been that way to an extent, for as long as either of them can remember, but it only got really bad after Takeshi settled.

He wasn’t what she wanted, that was the trouble. She’d never quite managed to forgive him for that, and he’d never been willing to apologise. He wasn’t what she wanted and really she shouldn’t have been surprised, because he was everything she refused to admit to being. There was nothing elegant, or demure or ladylike about him and what beauty he had was the beauty of power, and viciousness, not refinement. He was a lammergeir, a bonebreaker, scavenger, hunter, killer, that bathed in the blood of the dead, and ate their bones and revelled in it, and every time she saw him it was like a slap in the face that she wasn’t who she was trying to be.

The circumstances of his settling probably hadn’t helped. She’d fought with Ino for the very first time, fought over Sasuke, but the fight hadn’t really been about Sasuke at all. It had been about Ino and Sakura, and Sakura being so very tired of being Ino’s shadow, of trying to be like Ino and never quite suceeding. It had been about the way Ino was so good at being Kunoichi, being perfect and pretty and subtle in her deadliness with a jewel bright mantis daemon to match, while Sakura found herself blunt and brutal and violent at the core in a way that lent itself more to open combat and she _hated_ it. Because she had been seven and Ino was her best friend and more than anything else in the world she had wanted to be like Ino. It had been like a kick in the teeth that Takeshi had settled the day she had realized she never would be.

They wonder sometimes if being separated made things better or worse. Maybe if they’d been forced to spend time together after, then they might have managed to work out their issues. But then again maybe it would have just made them resent each other even more, turned their relationship even more toxic. It’s impossible to say, and honestly neither of them can imagine what their lives would have been like if they had broken tradition, it’s part of who they are now, as much as Sakura’s name and Takeshi’s form.

It hadn’t taken long for Sakura’s mother to realise Takeshi had settled. It was an awkward form to stay in, if shifting was still an option. At four feet tall he was too big to perch on seven year old Sakura’s shoulder, but he was still a bird and so not built for walking. It hadn’t taken long to figure it out and it hadn’t taken long for her to start packing. They’d left that night for the place that all the women of her family knew. A scar in the land where daemons could not follow.

Sakura still remembers the aching feeling of loss as she’d left Takeshi at the edge of that wasteland and walked on alone. She didn’t have to, family tradition or not, no one would ever have forced her to take those steps. But she’d been angry with Takeshi, and she’d wanted to be able to separate from him, she’d wanted to not have to look at him. Besides, it was useful for a ninja to be able to send their daemon to scout far ahead. And, she hesitated at the thought, it was tradition, and in this at least she could be a good daughter, could make her family proud, and honestly it surprised her how much that still mattered to her.

By the time she’d got back Takeshi had already flown away without her. It was a month before she saw him again. He never stays long. In his own way he resents her as much as she does him. He always hated the way she denied her true nature, the way she tried to act sweet and feminine and neglected her training in favour of obsessing over Saksuke, the way that she let people walk over her, the way she let others define her. He was all the fight and anger and independent spirit she refused to accept in herself and he would not stay silent. So he flew, far and wide and saw things she would never see, and then he’d come home to check in on her and for a few days maybe even a week they would be almost like an ordinary daemon and human, close as a person could only be with their own soul. For a few days maybe a week they could hold it together, stay civil, but then Takeshi would say something vicious and cutting, or Sakura would act silly and frivoulous, and they would fight. Things would be said that shouldn’t be said, and they’d both be cruel, and Takeshi would fly off in a huff, and not return for months. And so the cycle continued.

Takeshi wasn’t there when Sasuke left and when Sakura’s daemon returned he had no comfort to offer his human. He railed against the way she’d begged Sasuke to stay, he cast snide comments at her weakness, he’d spat all the venom and anger and resentment they had for each other in her face and she’d hit back.

“We’re strong Sakura, heart and soul. Strong, and vicious, and deadly, and proud. My shape makes that bloody obvious. Why do you try so hard to be weak? Why do you want to be something we’re not, will never be? Why did you beg him to stay? He was the traitor, the one planning to walk away without a word. You should have fought him, hit him, forced some sense into him. You should have made him _bleed_ for even considering betraying us.”

“I never _asked_ you to be so bloody obvious. I wanted to be a proper Kunoichi. I wanted a daemon that could be elegant and refined, and something other than a fucking tool for butchery.”

“Newsflash, if you wanted a cuddly bunny rabbit for a daemon then you should never have become a ninja. Ninja daemons are always killers. And we’re never going to be a proper Kunoichi, it’s not in our nature. We’re not gentle and kind like Hinata, we’re not elegant and deceptive like Ino. We’re vicious, and obvious, and we should fucking own it.” The conversation degenerated from there, and it ended as so many of their arguments did, with Takeshi flying off in a temper and Sakura refusing to acknowledge the tears in her eyes.

That was how it was between them, too raw, too close, too honest, and neither of them could bring themselves to admit out loud when the other was right. Takeshi was weeks gone when Sakura pulled herself together, dried her eyes, and went to ask Tsunade for an apprenticeship. If she was going to be obvious and aggressive, then she would fucking well learn from the best.

Of course Takeshi didn’t approve. She would have been surprised if he had. They were in the habit of disagreeing with each other now. He sneered at her for becoming a medic, for fulfilling everyone’s expectations of a Kunoichi’s role, he snapped at her for following in someone else’s footsteps, for letting her skills become simply a reflection of Tsunade’s, he outright laughed at her when he realized medics were meant to avoid combat.

“Since when have you been the sort of person who would avoid combat?” And there was a harsh mocking edge to his laugh. Sometimes Sakura hated the fact that he always sounded so much older than her, the result of years of travelling alone, of seeing the world, good and bad and indescribable. He’d seen things that she would most likely never see, and it was just another layer of separation between them.

He didn’t openly approve, but still, the first time he saw her shatter rocks with a punch, she could swear she saw pride in his eyes. It was an odd parallel to that day so many years ago when they were first separated, and he _flew_ so high and so far the thought of it made her dizzy, and despite how she felt about his form, in that moment he was nothing short of breathtaking. They may not be happy with each other’s choices, but they could still always find something to admire in each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured in a world where part of your inner self is outside your body, Sakura's split personality would have different implications.


	4. Kakashi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi and Aya are not ok

Aya is a ghost at Kakashi’s heels, silent as the grave and rake thin. She never speaks, hasn’t spoken, to Kakashi or anyone else since Rin’s death.

She settled early, even for a shinobi’s daemon. Settled that day he’d come home to the smell of blood and his father lying still and Nami nowhere to be seen, already crumbled into Dust. His father had been dead, and his daemon with him and in that moment of realisation Ara had taken the form of a wolf and _howled._ She didn’t look much like Nami had, for all that they took the form of the same animal. They were both wolves but where Nami had been big, and solid, and warm brownish grey, Aya was pale ghost grey and ragged looking, far too thin and too worn to be healthy. She had howled for all the tears that Kakashi refused to weep, and she hadn’t fallen silent until the Anbu had arrived to usher them away from Sakumo’s cold, still corpse, alone in a way he had never been in life.

A wolf without a pack, fierce, and unsociable, and untrusting. It fit them, and no matter how Kakashi tried to bury the thought, Aya rather likes that she has the same form as Nami. _She_ wants to remember, even if Kakashi wants to forget. They’d been her parents too after all, and where Sakumo had left behind a body, and a grave, and bloodstains that wouldn’t come out of the floor, Nami had left nothing. Nothing but Aya and Kakashi. It was only right, in her opinion that her form serve as a reminder. A reminder to the village that had driven Sakumo and Nami over the edge, a reminder to Kakashi and herself, who had failed to stop him. She never changed forms again.

She’d always been quiet. More so after Sakumo’s death, but with team seven it was less tense. Obito’s Ryuko talked enough for all of them, and Rin’s Kaito wasn’t exactly shy. Their easy way of speaking had helped Aya relax, and just occasionally venture a quiet but cutting joke that caught everyone off guard. Things had been getting better, until they suddenly all got worse.

She’d always been quiet so it was a few days after Obito’s death that people started to notice she’d stopped talking. She still spoke to Kakashi, but when other daemons spoke to her she no longer answered, not for anyone, not for the therapists, not for the Hokage’s daemon when she’d ordered her directly, not even for Minato sensei’s Kaede, who’d always been able to draw her into conversations before. When asked, all Kakashi would say was that she didn’t want to talk anymore. The look in his eye made people hesitate to push further, and so Aya remained silent.

After Rin died she stopped talking to Kakashi as well. Sometimes, in dark moments Kakashi wonders if she still remembers how. It has after all been so long since she’s spoken. So long that he could probably count on his fingers the number of people who remember the sound of her voice. His students have never heard it.

People say they don’t touch each other anymore. That’s not strictly true. They do touch. On bad nights they curl up together on Kakashi’s bed and try to still each other’s shaking. On good days Kakashi relaxes on his sofa with a book in his hands and Aya’s reassuring weight collapsed over his feet. But they haven’t touched in public since Minato sensei died. It’s too much grief and solitude, for either of them to be comfortable sharing with the public, so they walk through the crowds wearing as many kinds of masks as they can devise and they never touch where other people can see. It would feel too much like honesty.

He’s a little surprised his team haven’t brought up Aya’s odd behaviour, but then again, in their own ways they’re all just as broken as he and Aya. He suspects Sakura and Naruto may not have even noticed Aya’s silence. Naruto’s Aiko isn’t exactly a listener, and is just as likely to speak to a human as a daemon. Kakashi has never even met Sakura’s daemon, she’s separated and the two of them don’t get on well, he doesn’t come to training with her. Sasuke may well have noticed, being the most observant of his brats, but Kakashi doubts he cares enough to ask. Sasuke has no time for other people’s heartaches, no time for anyone’s soul but his own. Kakashi suspects Sasuke and Izumi are unhealthily co-dependent.

Sometimes Kakashi wonders if Aya will ever speak again, but honestly it isn’t really important. He and Aya don’t need words to understand each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah Aya basically expresses all the deep seated trauma Kakashi's been repressing.


	5. Sasuke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasuke is living proof that a healthy relationship with your daemon does not necessarily translate to a healthy relationship with the world in general.

It had been a source of some irritation for Sasuke, that he was the only one on his team whose daemon hadn’t settled yet. Not that he blamed Izumi for that, it wasn’t her fault. She was the only creature in the _world_ who understood why it was so important he destroy Itachi. She was his partner, his other self, his ally, the only one he could really trust because she was him really, or a part of him at least. He would _never_ blame her, especially for something as unimportant as that. Still the fact that the dobe was supposedly more adult than he was rankled a bit, he was much more mature than that idiot. But still Izumi flitted from shape to shape, while Aiko remained in the seagull form that she’d showed up in the day after the genin exam, and Sasuke had to face facts. Naruto had settled before him.

Honestly his teammate’s relationships with their daemons were weird. He didn’t understand how Naruto and Aiko could both be so loud and yet spend so little time talking to each other, or how Kakashi’s daemon could be so unnervingly silent. Sakura’s daemon was hardly ever even in the village, and the thought of being separated from Izumi for that long sent cold chills down his spine. He didn’t understand how the bond between human and daemon could decay so far. It wasn’t like he was a poster child for mental stability, but even he knew the importance of having a good relationship with his daemon.

He and Izumi had been in perfect agreement when they abandoned Konoha for Orochimaru’s training. They had a mission after all and if Orochimaru could help them get strong enough to kill Itachi, well then, there was really only one decision to make. Izumi had settled then, and Sasuke took that as further confirmation that he’d made the right choice. His childhood was over, and he couldn’t turn back.

Izumi’s form turned out to be rather useful. Orochimaru was uncomfortable around her, possibly because her form vaguely resembled a mongoose, and mongooses eat snakes. Orochimaru’s daemon was a snake and Sasuke suspected the implicit threat of it was enough to make the man reluctant to push Sasuke too far. Izumi wasn’t a mongoose though, she was a polecat. Sasuke had done his research after it became clear she wasn’t changing anymore. He was satisfied with it. It was a good shape, useful for more than its ability to discomfort Orochimaru. Small enough not to be obvious or get in the way of fighting, strong enough to be dangerous in her own right, and if she acted docile then she could pass for a tame ferret, rather than the vicious wild animal she was, which was handy for undercover work.

Beyond her practicality, she suited him, steppe polecats were vicious, solitary, and nomadic, and prone to taking on prey that was bigger than them. They stayed in a place only so long as it had things they needed, and Sasuke would be a fool not to see the parallels with his abandonment of Konoha. It was nice too, that she was furry, and small enough to fit on his shoulder. It was comforting, when he felt alone in the world, to feel her reassuring warmth curl into his neck and remind him that they were together self and soul, right to the bitter end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sasuke is fully in touch with his emotions and desires, which means he and Izumi actually have a very good relationship. Unfortunately he is less well aquainted with restraint, reason, and common sense, which means he is no saner than canon. Izumi is every bit as crazy as he is.

**Author's Note:**

> Oddly enough this fic started with Sai, mostly because Danzo would totally be into daemon severing. Then it sort of expanded out from there.


End file.
